France issues airlines blacklist

[Deanw]

France issues airlines blacklist

Monday, August 29, 2005

PARIS, France (AP) -- A blacklist of six air carriers forbidden to land on French soil for safety reasons comprises companies from Thailand, the U.S. Virgin Islands, North Korea, Mozambique and Liberia.

The French civil aviation authority, known by its initials DGAC, published the list late Sunday on its Internet site.

The airlines barred are: Air Koryo of North Korea; Air St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands; International Air Services of Liberia; Thailand's Phuket Airlines; and Linhas Aereas de Mocambique and Transairways, both from Mozambique.

Though all the airlines had been banned in recent years, France had never before made a blacklist public.

The measure was announced after a series of five aviation accidents in the past few months, including one involving a Colombian-registered charter that crashed in Venezuela, killing 152 French citizens from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
CNN

Two airlines from Mozambique :eek:

[B Sousa]

"Air St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands"

Now theres a piece of work. The guy has his hanger right next to our Helicopter Ops in St Thomas. Notorious for getting in the FAA's face. The French thing is due to an incident in St Barts which comes under French Authority. They are not pleased with his maintenance or lack therof.
For those of you who have not been into St Barts, look it up. Its a downhill runway and if you screw up your in the water.....
Hes gone through a ton of Pilots, not many have good words about him.

Dont know about Air Mozambique. I have flown them a couple times and things went well. At least as much as I knew about.........Anything more??

[Recuperator]

Again "great" reporting by a news agency.

One will always have the risks of aircraft accidents, especially with humans in the chain of events, maybe due to poor maintenance standards, bad weather, poor flight training, bad decision making or whatever.

The DGAC were not aware of the fact that the Colombian airline in question, operating in Venezuela from the Caribbean island of Martinique, killing 152 French citizens, were heavily fined for non compliance w.r.t. maintenance and other safety related issues. If they were, they would have put out an advisory to their nationals in that country. Standard practice, as it is in the USA and elsewhere in Europe.

Preventing these airlines entry could be to try and shift blame for not doing their job properly, and now suddenly trying to show that they are retroactively trying to prevent or reduce the amount of French nationals from flying with these airlines and by doing so reducing the risk of them dying, abroad or on home soil for that matter.

But that said, Air France hasn't really had a squeaky clean reputation themselves, not considering the recent spate of accidents including an A320 on 26 June 1988, Concorde on 25 July 2000 and an A340 overrunning the runway and bursting into flames on 2 Aug 2005.

This excludes the numerous attempted and successful hijackings (at least 9) over the years, one where an Algerian crowd wanted to fly the aircraft into the Eiffel Tower. Sounds familiar, doesn't it. The body count might not have been as high as the Twin Towers, but I ask you, would this have got the French, British and Americans off to fighting terrorism in Iraq? Somehow I don’t think so.

But then, I don’t see the DGAC preventing Air France from operating from their own soil or else where in the world for that matter... even if they are a danger to themselves...

By the way, should you go to the LAM website, Paris, in actual fact France is not one of their destinations, so nothing new there, just hot French air being blown.:hmm:

All I say is sweep your own doorstep first, but I suppose it is a sweep in the right direction.

Now… If you want to fly safe, give Qantas a try. Well done mates, keep up the good work. All you have to do now is sort out the Brits in the Ashes and the Kiwi’s in the rugby and all will be as right as rain!!:ok:

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France#Incidents_and_accidents:
(Not the Alpha & Omega of accident data, but sufficient for illustration.)

[ansonmk1]

Greetings all,

LAM!! difficult to understand that, must be something non of us know about, like just maybe-- that nasty little incident some 190 years ago in 1805, almost to the day if I recall. The Porra's and Brits have always had a 320 year old defence pact or something to that effect, the Frogs took a terrible beating at that place off the Spanish coast, Trafalgar me thinks, as I said -just maybe!

[Frogman1484]

On a lighter side If you read the atricle on CNN.com, you will see that the name of the French CAA official that banned the airlines is...Maxim Coffin!!!!!

[josephshankes]

Haven't seen Air France on the list.

[Stayinalive]

Air France....not doing too badly these days themselves I see...
Also believe Air Mauritania on the list as well....

[V1 Rotate]

It would be very interesting to see how Air France match up statistically to some of those blacklisted!

V1:cool: :cool: :cool:

[ZS-NDV]

This list is utterly useless. What's the point of telling potential passengers which airlines are banned from landing / overflying France???
The whole idea behind this initially was to alleviate the 'unsafe airline' problem feeling caused by recent tragic events.

What's the point of telling people: "Oh look here, this is a list of the airlines that are unsafe to fly on. Oh but, by the way, you can't fly on them anyway as they cannot come pick you up!".... Duuuuhhh...
Would be much more usefull to have a list of airlines having had serious problems reveled during inspections on French ground but who still have their autorisations to operate on (or over) french territory...

Pfffff.... real waste of time and another one of the French government's great ideas....:yuk:

Frenchy
(P.S. Yes, I am french)

[contraxdog]

Haven't seen the list, but I am willing to bet my last biltong that they haven included any of the carrriers of from their former colonies on that list. Just wouldnt make economical sence. Like Air Scameroon for instance. Or Scair Ivoire, or Scair Gaboon.They just listed the ones that doesnt fly there in anycase.
French Logic!

[V1 Rotate]

Also bet they will conveniently leave out any operators who use or will potentially use Airbuses !!
V1 :cool: :cool: :cool: